The Count: Salmons Pushes Bucks Into Contention

The Milwaukee Bucks are on a hot streak. The sad-sack franchise, which hasn’t finished more than two games over .500 or won a playoff series in nine seasons, has won 14 of its last 20 games. That includes three wins, by a combined 50 points, over the Miami Heat, whom the Bucks just passed for the No. 7 playoff position in the East. The Celtics, who could be the Bucks’ first-round opponent, have dropped 11 of their last 20.

Associated Press

The Bucks’ first loss with John Salmons in the lineup was to Josh Smith and Atlanta, a top Eastern Conference team.

Milwaukee’s surge isn’t readily explicable from the box score. Brandon Jennings leads the team in scoring, among regulars who have been there all season. The rookie scored 55 points in a game earlier this season, and is averaging 16.1 points per game. However, he’s doing so despite putting up some abysmal shooting numbers inside the three-point line. According to Hoopdata.com, he’s the only regular in the league (among those to have played at least 40 games and averaging 20 minutes per game or more) to shoot below 40% from each of four different distances inside the arc: at the rim, within 10 feet, 11-15 feet and 16-23 feet. And he takes at least 1.5 shots per game from each of those distances. That’s a remarkable rate of brick-laying for a guard who hits 38% of his three-pointers and 81% of his free throws.

Perhaps the difference maker is John Salmons. Since acquiring the guard from Chicago, the Bucks have won six of seven, with their only loss coming in overtime to Atlanta, the fourth-best team in the East. And Salmons has averaged 20.1 points per game since his arrival. But it may not be his scoring that’s been most instrumental. After all, he shot just 39% in his first four games with Milwaukee and the Bucks offense didn’t improve much. But their defense improved dramatically, as Kevin Pelton notes at Basketball Prospectus. Numbers from hoops analyst Wayne Winston and BasketballValue.com show that teams are better off with Salmons on the floor than without him.

It’s important not to read too much into a midseason hot streak, though. The Knicks won 12 of 18 games earlier this year, including defeats of Phoenix, Portland and Atlanta (twice). Since then New York has lost 19 of 24 games, and has been the league’s worst team since the All-Star break, according to Winston.

Should Milwaukee sustain its run, it would mark a reversal for a franchise that has endured a tough two decades, featuring just one season with at least 50 wins and a playoff-series victory (2000-01). As a sign of their futility, Lee Mayberry, who started his career on some awful Bucks teams, is the player with the third worst career won-loss record among those who have played at least 10,000 minutes, according to Basketball Reference’s Neil Paine. But another recent Paine blog post recalls a time of better Bucks basketball: Milwaukee played in three of the 10 most competitive playoff series to go the maximal number of games, winning in two of them.

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